“Unnecessary” Change

Sometimes it’s obvious that something in your home has to go. It’s broken. Or has outdated technology and won’t perform modern functions we’ve come to expect. Or you’ve always thought it was ugly and you’re ready for something beautiful. Whether out of a functional or aesthetic need, there are things we can justify replacing and changing in our homes.

But then there are so many things that are “fine”. They work the way they are supposed to and they aren’t hideous. Why change them?

One small example of this in our own home was the artwork over our mantel. When we bought the house the mantel was stained dark brown. We created our own custom gallery wall that coordinated nicely with five floating frames in a wood tone complementary to the mantel color. And then two years ago we updated the room and painted the mantel white. My frames didn’t work anymore. But everyone else who saw them thought they still worked, and I heard, “they look nice – why change them?”

While the cost to change them wasn’t extremely high, it still took me about a year to get past that argument, bite the bullet, and buy new frames. And when I got them up above that mantel it was like I’d taken a big deep breath of clean cool air. Now the wall makes sense again!

When I look up at those frames it’s a reminder to me to trust my instincts. I’m not saying we have to change everything in our homes all the time just to be ‘on trend’, but sometimes a change that seems insignificant can have a truly positive impact on a space.

However, when it comes to the flipping process I can’t just dismiss this question and change anything and everything (even when my instinct says “change that!”). In fact, I’m sure this is going to be a question we wrestle with often as we start our first flip. What is “good enough”? We walked around a property recently with our realtor and I muttered something about ripping off the ugly aluminum siding if we got the house. Why? He asked. He pointed out that it was pretty much in good shape and could be painted. True, but I’d still want to rip it off!

So this is one challenge I anticipate – the difficult issue of how far to go with improvements on an investment home. I don’t really know if I’ll be able to reign myself in and keep the costs down when I have so much design trying to burst out!